By Robert A. Geake
In the year 1779, a slave owner from Connecticut named Joshua Mandale and a North Carolina planter and militia officer named John Rice both came into Rhode Island and purchased enslaved individuals that were intended to be transported to their home states.
Mandale was from Stonington, Connecticut, and his purchase of a “negroe woman and children” was quickly contested and brought before the legislature. John Rice, while passing through Kings County, “ having business to transact in other New England states”; purchased “four negroes for $3,000.00 Spanish milled dollars" from Carder Hazard of South Kingstown and quickly moved on. The planter "permitted his slaves to…remain in Narragansett until he could get ready to go home on the 18th of June[i]”. The enslaved individuals purchased from Hazard were a woman and her three children.
Neither Mandale nor Rice were apparently informed prior to their purchases that a Rhode Island Resolution passed in 1774 not only banned outright the importation of enslaved people into the state but also, with the intent of curbing the spread of slavery, prevented the passage of enslaved people out of the state, "unless by their master's consent." In addition, all enslaved individuals brought into the state after the law was brought into effect would, in fact, be considered free[ii].
The lofty preamble of the law would be tested in the cases to come…
“Wheras the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which that of personal freedom must be considered as the greatest, and as those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves should be willing to extend personal liberty to others…[iii]”
For most Rhode Islanders involved in the trade, this meant landing their cargo in ports outside the state. But for those carrying the enslaved over the borders of New England states or looking to buy enslaved people and then transport them out of those borders where they had been bought, such traffic was becoming increasingly problematic.
During the same period, Rhode Island also passed statutes discouraging individual emancipation. Between 1728 and 1775, acts were passed that incrementally increased the amount of a bond that enslaved owners, or sometimes the enslaved themselves, were required to post in return for freedom. These bonds were used to offset the growing cost of those formerly enslaved, many of whom could easily become indigent or dependent upon public aid to survive.[iv].
The Rhode Island body of laws regarding slavery would be tested by two cases brought before the General Court that year of 1779. Moreover, it would raise a quandary wrought by the state's own wrangling over emancipation, passing measure after measure in the legislature that moved toward, but never reached, the absolute abolishment of enslavement; while at the same time punishing those owners who did emancipate as described above.
The cases first passed before the desk of Beriah Brown, High Sheriff of the County of Kings County. While Brown received missives from the Governor and performed tedious tasks in his role as High Sheriff, he was also among the most powerful men in the state. Apart from his duties as Sheriff, his own business investments had made him wealthy. In 1748 he had invested in the sloop Elizabeth, engaged for two years in the Caribbean trade, and by the time of the American Revolution, had outfitted the privateer The General Mifflin to plunder the British fleet.[v].
As High Sheriff, no land transactions in agrarian Kings County, no probate inventory, nor the sale of goods from that inventory were sealed without passing his desk.[vi], including those of enslaved individuals. Among Brown’s papers are a suit regarding an enslaved man purchased by one Joshua Holmes, who later proved to be free; the receipt for a black man named Jack purchased by the Sheriff in 1774; and the document concerning an enslaved person named Jim, who was auctioned from the estate of Charles Slocum in 1777[vii].
In addition, Brown owned enslaved men, including one named Thomas, who enlisted on February 25, 1778, just eleven days after the State's General Assembly passed an Act to form a regiment that offered freedom to enslaved men in exchange for three years of military service. Brown had agreed to Thomas' enlistment, being paid the maximum of 120 pounds as compensation. But just a few weeks later, on 17 March 1778, he penned an urgent letter to Col. Christopher Greene:
“I have heard that my negro boy Scipio has inlisted. He is but fourteen years & three months old. I am as willing to defend my country as any man in it (.) but as Tom has inlisted and I have now no other boy to do anything for me(,) I should be very much obliged to you if you would send Scipio home again and not receive him as I have no other boy”.
Both of Browns’ former enslaved boys would remain enlisted. Thomas served as a drummer in Capt. Elijah Lewis’ Company, and later in the 8th company of the Rhode Island Regiment. His fourteen-year-old “boy” Scipio also enlisted to serve as a drummer, first in Capt. Ebenezer Frank’s Company, then with Capt. John Haden's company, and finally, with Capt. John S. Dexter's company of the Rhode Island Regiment. By his 18th birthday, he was at Yorktown.[viii].
In 1785, Brown drafted a notice for the return of a runaway enslaved man named "Pomp." He was returned and working in Scituate, Rhode Island, the following year.
Brown also oversaw cases of debt, trespass, and the contested sale of property within Kings County. All remained under his jurisprudence until handed before the General Court. As the Court consisted of a panel of judges and the RI Assemblymen gathered together, such hearings took place quarterly over a matter of days or even weeks, depending upon the caseload brought before the Court and, most importantly, the complexity of those cases and the length of debate that took up the General Court’s time.
As Brown placed these two cases before the General Court, the authorities clearly saw the need to clarify further and establish a precedent for other cases challenging the Resolution of 1774.
In Mandale’s case, the sale of the enslaved woman and children to the inhabitant of another state occurred after the death of their master and therefore were sold to Mandale without his consent. The House debated the issue and determined, with the buyer’s agreement, that-
“The said Joshua Mandale shall sell the said Negro and children to some subject or subjects within this state, whose humanity shall be approved by Carder Hazard of South Kingstown, the original owner of said slave-the said Joshua Mandale shall be liable to pay all the charges and expenses that hath accrued, or that shall accrue for the keeping of said slaves in the custody of Beriah Brown, High Sheriff of the County of Kings County[ix]”.
In the case of John Rice, the North Carolina planter who had such business to transact in New England seems to have no idea that he had been taken advantage of by the Rhode Islanders, but that quickly changed with the series of events that unfolded, as laid out in his own hand and complaint to the Sheriff.
When Rice appeared at the farm of Carder Hazard that June, he found that the enslaved people, which he believed his property, were now divided between the homes of John Cropes and Lodowick Stanton, the son of Col. Joseph Stanton, owner of one of the largest estates in South County. Rice had come "with a wagon for their easy transportation" and set out to retrieve the enslaved people he had purchased. The planter succeeded in obtaining a pair from Cropes, but when he pulled up to the home of Lodowick Stanton,
“…Said Stanton offered to buy the oldest and the youngest and leave two children on my hands. I refused to sell, he still persisted (in wanting) to purchase, to take them at one half the first sum and allow me two hundred dollars for my bargain. I still refused to sell. He then gave her (the young woman) a beckon in the back room she soon came to me with an application to return …to Cropes. I was afraid to let her go for fear she would not return-but said Stanton soon became her security for returning and let her have a horse, his wife’s saddle, & gave me an invitation to stay at his house for the night with a promise that it should cost me nothing”.
Rice agreed, but all the enslaved were gone when he woke in the morning. Stanton initially expressed surprise and concern but later told Rice that it was all the plan of John Cropes, who wanted his negro man back, and that they had all been taken to Block Island.
After six weeks of broken promises for their return, Rice filed the complaint quoted above, which the High Sheriff forwarded to the Court of Complaints.
Rice’s letter to Beriah Brown is full of fire and brimstone, the tale of how an honest southern gentleman was hoodwinked by the most irascible of hosts, and he listed a series of complaints upon Lodowick Stanton’s character:
“…it is necessary that Lod(owic)k Stanton’s character should be inquired into among his neighbors & others..first know from Mr. Christopher Babcock(,) who steals fence rails of his own kins(?) then Daniel Stanton, who steals feathers of his living geese, and who steals his sheep(?) of his own mother in law(,) who stole her Turkeys(,) and inquire of Paris Garners brother how the Traveling Pedlar was served with his pack which was long in Stanton’s house…”
So indignant was the North Carolinian of his treatment at the hands of the Rhode Islanders that he composed a sonnet within the complaint as though a final thrust in a fencing duel:
“They tied me down like unto a goat
Then a knife tried cutt my throat
No man can hold his lawful property
While Laws look back with inconsistency
By a set of arbitrary knaves
I am deprived of my rightful slaves
Which wicked rulers have then trod
On States & property Law and God”.
As fervent as Rice was to see justice, the case would not appear before the court, which met quarterly, until October 1779.
What would the General Court decide? Unlike the Mandale case, Carder Hazard had willfully sold his enslaved family to a man from out of the state. Given that he likely knew that said enslaved family would be transferred beyond Rhode Island’s borders, would that not constitute consent?
But given the previous ruling in that case, which seemed to enforce the intent of the Resolution passed in 1774, would that argument be strong enough to nullify the sale or cause the enslaved to be sold within the state as has been ruled previously?
By the time the case was heard, Rice's temper had cooled, and an amicable agreement had been reached that kept to the letter of the law. No doubt negotiations had been brokered by Beriah Brown, who would ultimately be responsible for the sale of the enslaved individuals Rice had purchased.
The General Court’s ruling reads as follows:
”The Condition of the shown obligation to such that who you John Rice of Hartford in the State of North Carolina on the 13th day of May Last Past purchased of Carder Hazard of South Kingstown in So. County … a Negro woman, & her three children which 1 Negro was Detected from being carried out of this state & detained therin & put in the Custody of Beriah Brown Esq. Sheriff of aforesaid County of Kings County & at a General Assembly held in the state on the 28th day of October 1779, that said John Rice wasn’t permitted to make sale of the said Negro woman & her children by him purchased of Carder Hazard Esq. to any person an inhabitant and Resident within this state, and that the Sheriff of the County of Kings County Deliver them to the Purchaser, he giving Security to the Sheriff not to send them out of this State agreeable to the Resolution & Whereupon it Affirmath that the above Bound in Joseph Noyes hath purchased of the said John Rice two of the afore named Negro children named Mary & Jane & that if the Said Joseph Noyes nor his heirs , Executors, Administration or any other person or persons for him, shall not send said Negroes or either of them the above out of this State agreeable to the Resolution of the Recited Assembly then the above obligation to be void & of none effect or else to abide & remain in full force & the wards in this State…”
Joseph Noyce signed the order in the presence of John Rice and Christopher Babcock.
Once again, while holding to the intent of the Resolution in disallowing the transfer of enslaved people beyond the state’s borders, Rhode Island failed again those most "desirous of sharing all the liberties and advantages shared by others." The state of Connecticut would pass a similar Resolution in 1780, but it was a steady stream of individual cases within the courts of New England that began during the American Revolution that set a firm current toward the passage of Emancipation Acts in the region.
Some cases reached the Supreme Courts of their states, such as the 1779 case of Brakkee v. Lovell in which Pompey Brakkee, an enslaved man who was held by Elijah Lovell long after Vermont had banned enslavement was finally freed from bondage. The Berkshire County Court of Common Pleas was the first court in Massachusetts to affirm in the 1781 case of Brom and Bett v. Ashley that as the newly adopted constitution of the state provided that "all men are born free and equal," Brom and Elizabeth (Bett) Freemen were ordered to be emancipated. In that same year, the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas determined in the case of Quock Walker v. Jennison that Walker was found to be a freeman on the basis that "slavery was contrary to the Bible and the Constitution of Massachusetts. On appeal by Jennison in 1783, Justice William Cushing told the Jury in his instructions that "slavery is in my judgement effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence."
It was not the will of the body politic of Rhode Island, however, to pass an Act for Gradual Emancipation until 1784.
[i] Beriah Brown papers, Rhode Island Historical Society MSS 109, Box 4, folder 7
[ii] See Melish, Joan Pope, Slavery in Rhode Island Encore Educational, and Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement Princeton University Press 1926 p. 35
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Melish, Slavery in Rhode Island
[v] Stattler, Rick Finding Aid Beriah Brown Papers
[vi] A desk that has resided for years in the small summer “law office” of Daniel Updike. Brown may not have known that he was related to the Updikes through the marriage of Kathryn Updike Goddard, whose family donated the desk to the historic house museum.
[vii] Stattler, Rick Finding Aid Beriah Brown Papers
[viii] Popek, Daniel They Were Brave, But Unfortunate p. 423
[ix] Beriah Brown papers, RIHS MSS 109 Box 4, folder 7